This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

India set to launch ambitious satellite voyage to Mars

With launch of Mangalyaan, India aims join world’s deep-space pioneers with journey to Mars that it hopes will showcase its technological ability.

Security personnel stand guard near at the Satish Dhawan Space Center in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. With a Tuesday launch planned for Mangalyaan, India will attempt to become only the fourth country or group of countries to reach the Red Planet. (Arun Sankar K. / The Associate Press)

By Katy DaigleThe Associated Press

Mon., Nov. 4, 2013

NEW DELHI—India is aiming to join the world’s deep-space pioneers with a journey to Mars that it hopes will showcase its technological ability to explore the solar system while seeking solutions for everyday problems on Earth.

With a Tuesday launch planned for Mangalyaan, which means “Mars craft” in Hindi, India will attempt to become only the fourth country or group of countries to reach the Red Planet, after the Soviet Union, the United States and Europe.

“We have a lot to understand about the universe, the solar system where we live in, and it has been humankind’s quest from the beginning,” said K. Radhakrishnan, chairman of the Indian Space and Research Organization.

India sees its Martian mission primarily as a “technology demonstration,” Radhakrishnan said. “We want to use the first opportunity to put a spacecraft and orbit it around Mars and, once it is there safely, then conduct a few meaningful experiments and energize the scientific community.”

Radhakrishnan admits the aim is high. This is India’s first Mars mission, and no country has been fully successful on its first try. More than half the world’s attempts to reach Mars — 23 out of 40 missions — have failed, including missions by Japan in 1999 and China in 2011.

Article Continued Below

If India can pull it off, it will demonstrate a highly capable space program that belongs within an elite club of governments exploring the universe.

Mangalyaan is scheduled to blast off Tuesday from the Indian space centre on the southeastern island of Shriharikota, the start of a 300-day, 780 million-kilometre journey to orbit Mars and survey its geology and atmosphere.

Five solar-powered instruments aboard Mangalyaan will gather data to help determine how Martian weather systems work and what happened to the water that is believed to have once existed on Mars in large quantities. It also will search Mars for methane, a key chemical in life processes on Earth that could also come from geological processes.

None of the instruments will send back enough data to answer these questions definitively, but experts say the data are key to better understanding how planets develop geologically, what conditions might make life possible and where else in the universe it might exist.

Some of the data will complement research expected to be conducted with a probe NASA will launch later this month, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, nicknamed MAVEN.

“We’re pulling for India,” said Bruce Jakosky, project leader for the U.S. spacecraft. “The more players we have in space exploration the better.”

Radhakrishnan said that although sending a spacecraft to Mars would bring India immense prestige, “we are doing this for ourselves. The main thrust of space science in India has always been people-centric, to benefit the common man and society.”

India, as well known for its endemic poverty and hunger as for its technological prowess, has used research in space and elsewhere to help solve problems at home, from gauging water levels in underground aquifers to predicting cataclysmic storms and floods.

India’s $1 billion-a-year space program has helped develop satellite, communication and remote sensing technologies that are being used to measure coastal soil erosion, assess the extent of remote flooding and manage forest cover for wildlife sanctuaries. They are giving fishermen real-time data on where to find fish and helping to predict natural disasters such as a cyclone that barrelled into India’s eastern coast last month. Early warning information allowed Indian officials to evacuate nearly a million people from the massive storm’s path.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com